The best financial apps of 2014

The market for professional money managers isn’t going away anytime soon, but as the mobile industry becomes more sophisticated, apps are starting to handle some of the heavy lifting.

That’s a good thing, too, since Americans on the whole are woefully bad at managing their finances. A study by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s Investor Education Foundation found that 19 percent of Americans are spending more money then they make. Meanwhile, the FINRA Foundation’s “State-by-State Financial Capability Survey,” which surveyed more than 25,000 respondents, found that 56 percent don’t have enough tucked away to cover three months of unanticipated financial emergencies.

Who is Chris?

For more than 25 years, Chris Morris has covered the financial world - and explored the business side of a variety of non-traditional businesses. He has held senior management roles at CNN, Yahoo! Finance and Forbes,

In 2009, though, he made the decision to return to his writing and reporting roots, with a focus on areas he has long covered, including video games, consumer electronics, personal finance. (He continues to keep an eye on those non-traditional fields as well.)